Please explain "phishing" to me in simple terms?

Question

Thanky kindly

Answer 1

I send you an email saying I am a company you do business with, like your bank or credit card. I tell you there is a problem with your account in an email, and ask you to follow a link to "the bank's" website to straighten it out. You get to my fake website, and fill in the information I ask you for. I tell you everything is fine now, but i have what I need to get into your account.

Of course there are variations, but that's the basic scam. Prevent it by not trusting an email. If your bank says there is a problem, go to the bank's website yourself, don't follow the link in the email, or call the bank instead.

Answer 2

In computing, phishing is a criminal and fraudulent activity using social engineering techniques. Phishers usually use the identity of well known and trustworthy entities to deceive users. Ebay and Paypal are two of the most often targeted companies used for phishing attacks. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card numbers, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity via a legitimate looking email or website. Phishing is typically carried out using email or an instant message, although phone contact has been used as well. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, and technical measures.

The first recorded mention of phishing is on the alt.online-service.america-online Usenet newsgroup on January 2, 1996, although the term may have appeared even earlier in the print edition of the hacker magazine 2600. The term phishing is a variant of fishing, probably influenced by phreaking, and alludes to the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to "fish" for users' financial information and passwords. The word may also be linked to leetspeak, in which ph is a common substitution for f. The popular theory that it is a portmanteau of password harvesting is an example of folk etymology.

Answer 3

Just see this example :

I have hosted a fake website for yahoo and it opens up the same page as you...lets take Yahoo Mail page.
And you are putting in your Login Id and Password there...so by putting the fake website which will seem to you as the Original site I am spying on your login details.
In simple words, just getting out the information from the user by floating a fake website on the server.
I guess you understand what I said!

Answer 4

If someone who isn't really a police but wearing a fake badge and IDs approaching you saying they represent a precinct who recovered your stolen property and you have to GIVE THAT GUY YOUR SIN CARD to let him finish some papers; then that is a real-world equivellent of phishing.

In other words, a trojan out on the 'Net for information. Comes from "fishing" and it happens to be a Taiwanese slang word describing tricking someone out of some information.

Answer 5

this is an easy one. I work at at bank so i know all about it.
phishing is where someone or someones attempts to steal your personal information. weather its credit card numbers, password, social security number. there are a number of ways they could attempt this.

1. send mass emails to potential suckers posing there is a security threat on their account and they should log into a fake website and confirm their identity.
2. call you by phone concerning a security threat on their account.

sometimes they get lucky, but most people are smarter than that.

Answer 6

Phishing just means when someone uses trickery to gain information from you for personal use in some manner . for instance they may tell you that you won a million dollars but they want your bank account number to deposit the money when in reality they want to withdraw all the money you already have.

Answer 7

It's basically where someone malicious presents a page to you (either in an email, or on a non-authorative web site) that looks like another web page, typically a Sign-In page to internet banking.

Because it 'looks' like the real web page it lures people into entering their sign-in details, but instead it gets sent to the malicious person(s) behind the fake page.

Answer 8

A bad person puts up a fake website (say from a bank), asking you to confirm your data. That will give them your personal information, your bank accounts, etc. Then they can send spam emails for people to go to that fake site.